Roaming The Google Streets

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About This Travelogue

This blog is about the lesser known but beautiful, wonderful, huge, unique and sometimes bizarre places around the World. Started on January 1, 2009, it is an outcome of my association with Google Earth Community, which I joined on Sept. 29, 2006. Since then I have been regularly flying to almost all the corners of WWW (Whole Wide World) and have virtually adopted the age old motto - Perfect time to see the World is after retirement.

My favourite section in the Community is "Fun and Games" - in which members post riddles and puzzles on almost all subjects and generally give hints for searching and locating the relevant places and or events on Google Earth. I have made several hundred posts in this forum and must have solved about the same number, though several were beyond my grasp. Believe me it is not easy to solve these riddles - Finding the answer is 90% perspiration (research) and 10% inspiration but it is pure 100% joy and sense of exhilaration.

This forum provides a stimulus to my brain and keeps it active. I strongly recommend this for those who have time and penchant for solving puzzles, but a word of warning – it is highly addictive.

My travels around the World are not limited to Fun and Games only, however many of the places being covered in this travelogue were found as a result of my researches for making posts in Fun and Games or trying to solve the riddles given therein.

Google Earth

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The balanced rocks are a geological formation created due to wind/water
erosion or glacial melting. These precariously balanced rocks are wonder of the
nature and to a viewer it looks that these would topple by a gentle human push
or a wind force. However most of these rocks have remained steadfast for past
several thousand years though some were vandalised and pushed over. To some
scientists these rocks are a sign of seismic stableness of the location.

This post is part of the series about these awesome and breathtaking rocks around the world. List giving links to individual rocks can be seen here and a combined big page showing all the rocks can be viewed here.

Balanced Rocks of Hyderabad, India

Nature has gifted Hyderabad with a
magnificent landscape of amazing rock formations. Being at the heart of the Deccan
Plateau in Southern India, the rocks in the region, mostly granite, are about
2,500 million years old and are amongst the oldest and hardest rocks in the
world. Weathering effect of several million years resulted in splitting and rounding of the
stones into amazingly balanced and picturesque rock shapes. Geologist call this
phenomenon - onion peel weathering (or spheroidal weathering).

There are innumerable rock formations of varied shapes in whole of Deccan
Plateau including Hyderabad and surrounding area. In this post I am showcasing
only few of these Amazingly Balanced Rocks.

Location of these Rocks are presently not known. I request my readers to please
help me in identifying locations of above three rocks.

Note: Hyderabad is full of such amazing rocks and presently I have showcased
only a very minuscule sample. I will be grateful if my readers can send me
photographs and locations of other balanced rocks for inclusion in this blog. I
understand that land developers are gradually destroying this amazing natural
landscape and my endeavour is to at least preserve these in pictorial format for
posterity.

In this reference I want to make a special mention of Ms. Frauke Quader a German
born lady now settled in Hyderabad. Dismayed by indiscriminate destruction of
the natural and environmental heritage of the area, she along with a group of
artists, photographers and environmentalists from Hyderabad formed in 1992 a
Non-Governmental Organization - Society to Save Rocks. The society's main aim is
to create awareness amongst the public, landowners, developers and the
government for the protection of this rocky landscape.

Similarly all other photos/images from various other sources are under the copyright of their respective owners, web portals/application etc from which these were obtained. Wherever possible due acknowledgement has been made about the source.

Actual terms of copyright/reuse is available in the source link given below each image.